A pile of vintage linen

I'm a bit of a fan of vintage linen, especially floral sheets and pillowcases, so I'm always on the look out for it at op shops. My first project for this blog brings much of this collection together to make a beautiful little skirt for my daughter Juliet.

I started off with this pile. 3 pillowcases, 2 sheets and one doona cover.

I decided to make a shirt with both an over and underskirt, so my first step was to cut 8 panels to make the gores for the 2 skirt pieces. I used 4 different fabrics (sheets) for the underskirt and 2 different fabrics for the overskirt. The overskirt is a little bit fuller and shorter than the underskirt.

Here are all of my cut out jigsaw pieces.

All the panels were then sewn together, and I added some elastic gathering along the length of each panel on the overskirt, by sewing elastic lines along the length of the skirt that were about 1/4 shorter than the skirt fabric.

Here are the 2 skirts, with a little bit of lace and ric rac added to one seam.

And my completed skirt with a yolk (pillowcase) and simple elastic waistband. Of course I couldn't resist adding a great big reclaimed button.